Hooraaay, The Site's Back Up!!

Suki The drinking thing is an an in joke between me and Eddie. I am not being nasty to Liana, a writer whom I have upmost respect for and she knows that. I have an acid tongue sure. I was in Oregen on the day it happened, I never said I was in NY. We could not get out of the country for ten days we had to go to LA ( a place I despise for many reasons)and we witnessed several funerals of victims of the Pittsburgh flight. I have many, many private memories of that time (we all do) and I think about it every day. I look at planes all the time and then I look at the floor. I'm no more special than anyone else for what i have seen, I dont want prizes. I am just very severly affected by what happened and am I am having counciling for it as is my partner Jane. Its just that the word 'horrific' is overused so much these days, like the word stunning. Sorry if I have offended, but I was. Ralph

Suki By the way I know who you are. I thought we got past this faking the name biz. Bit like your hair colour I think. Tartar sauce anyone? Ralph x

How many people have you accused so far now Larph? Tartar (sic) sauce, famous grouse and now Simple Simon. Si, for the record, (like he would care about all this anyway) a) doesnt use aol anymore, and b) could no longer give a toss, having been abused quite enough thank you. However, you use aol. The time to drop it has come sweety. Really, it has. Please??

'Tis the season to be jolly' Come on everyone join in!! fa la la la la!! :0)

Give it a rest.............pleeeeeease............... All this bitching does you nor anyone else any favours. Hair colour??? I mean.....really......

Ralph is correct about the in joke. We have been in convivial e-mail contact and I'm sure our comments in this thread will have no effect on future correspondence. And he said nice things about my writing, which always endears me to people.

of course you mean me ralph ... tho a little intelligence applied to the situation would actually show that i am not even using AOL at the moment ... so do stop being a @!#$ ... there's a dear ...

that was w.a.n.k.e.r. by the way ...

if you read suki's email address there appears to be a hidden message... if so, then the anon. author is clearly a male.

Whatever.

opps

ralph, no, I would have called you a wimp if that is what I had meant. The inference is in your mind. So any offense you have taken is due to your own thoughts and the words you have tried to put into my cyber mouth. my point was quite clear. There are others that have reason to be even more affected by events than you but they do take umbrage over semantics. I think if someone were to say "all firemen who died in the WTC are tossers and deserved to die" then it would be right to give them a bloody nose. But no one did. Now stop insulting everyone and being such a drama queen.

Setting aside for one moment the undoubtedly traumatic events of September 11th - anyone touched by it in the slightest is undoubtedly going to take some time to come to terms with it and I would never want to belittle that; and whilst also wanting to lower the temperature in this thread - I found the intitial idea interesting. Are there words which should not be used because the context pales in comparison to something much larger and more important ? Horrific, presumably tragedy, atrocity,dreadful, catastrophe, awful - where would you draw the line ? Something can be sad or awful without being AS sad or awful as something bigger. And for how long are the words retired ? The only word I would draw the line at using because of a more important context (rather than racist words) is Holocaust. That, I think is a word which does carry a large weight and should not be used without thought.

Andrew The word 'stunning' always gets my goat. I see adverts on the telly for new albums by pop kid bands and the tagline for the voiceover is 'The Stunning new album by'. Is it really stunning. Stunning to me means to stop you in your tracks. shock almost. Now I am shocked by 'Westlife' but not in the manner that 'Woolworths' want me to be. Ralph

I've started reading Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence. In the first chapter he discusses the meaning of the word culture and describes misuses, such as "the culture of passengers on the Eurostar" or some such relatively trivial and short-lived experience. In this case, we are broadening the use of the word "culture" to include things that are far more narrow or transient than actual cultural characteristics (which would probably last for centuries, not hours). In the case of a word like "nightmare," for example, we would be artificially increasing the intensity of the experience in order to make it qualify as a nightmare, such as the nightmare of having a bad hair day. Frankly, none of this really bothers me. I just figure that the speaker is either exaggerating for effect, or just does not speak English very well. Some might find this interesting: in Poland, it is considered very bad form to exaggerate. In fact, exaggerating is probably worse than cursing in many situations (not during an audience with the Pope perhaps, but in most everyday situations). The effect of this is that Poles will downplay situations in order to avoid a charge of exaggeration. Americans, on the other hand, exaggerate all the time as a figure of speak, and sometimes deliberately for effect. You can probably see where this is going. Gawd, what a balancing act! They would downplay, or outright deny, the significance of something, and I would become increasingly animated (and "exaggerated") in trying to convince them to pay attention. I never did find a particularly satisfactory solution for this. It was just one of those things.

I am totally gob-smacked at this thread.Outraged. The appallling abuse has been shocking, harrowing. People who I thought were unswerving friends have been persecuting each other for their frivolous use of words ....this carnage must stop. We must not lacerate each other in this way, we must ...oh whatever.

I find that there are many more things to be outraged over than the misuse of words... language in all its forms fascinates me. Sorry if that sounds pompous. *she adds hastily* Gabs, love that last post :o))

Use a condom, it's safer!

So very sorry about the absence of your favourite site. The catalogue of crimes reminds me of the Flanders and Swann song 'Twas on the Monday Morning, The Gasman Came To Call. In any case, as each bit of equipment blows up and causes chaos we learn to put in safety procedures that will prevent it from causing mayhem again. This time it was the British Telecom router in the office which went belly-up and the knock-ons were horrific. We have now implemented an external name server which should stop it happening again - but who knows where the next bug will strike and lay us low. One thing I've learned about the internet is to never trust technology. There's a million people in this business who tell you 'Oh this bit of kit never goes wrong' - and next thing you know, guess what! Yours with much phlegma, Tony

Tony Glad to see the site back up. Good news. But were the problems in the office really 'horrific' Tony. It was a web site that did not function for twenty four hours, thats all. In these current times prudence of the words that we all choose to use should be at the fore. Ralph

Ralph, Trust me on this one. If it's YOUR web site that goes down, and by that I mean you're the the owner/manager of the site, it is horrific. I've been there. Always have a backup plan. Technology always fails, sooner or later. I remember in the 1960s our neighbor had a commercial greenhouse, growing flowers for the retail florist market. He installed a large heater (this was a very large group of greenhouses, probably 3 acres under roof!) to prevent everything from freezing at night in the winter. The manufacturer told him: Nothing can go wrong. Trust me. This heater will last at least 50 years. There are all kinds of controls on it. If anything is out of order, the controls will go off, alert you wherever you are, and you can fix the problem. Don't worry. Shortly before Christmas, this "eternal heater" malfunctioned at night, just simply heated up to the point that it almost melted, then just stopped altogether. All the flowers froze and died. None of the failsafe systems worked. Even something simple like an emergency autoshutoff failed to function. Oooops. Anyway, glad the site is back up.

Referring back to the original title of the thread, the overriding impression is of one person thinking to himself 'Hooraaay, I'm Getting the Site's Back Up!!!' This site has a long history of wind-up merchants. The trick is to not be intimidated by them. They are, after all, just a bunch of clowns who amuse me no end. I can't wait for another witty riposte...

Justin I disagree. What happened on Sept 11th was horrific. Enough said Ralph

How many times have you said "I'm starving" Ralph? And I doubt that you were. Figure of speech and all that mate...

head out of @!#$ ralph ... there's a dear ...

that was a.r.s.e. by the way ...

Glad to see you back and that nothing has changed.

glad to see who back tom?

...well, not much, anyway...

The site, Finster. Not you my juggy one. Sorry.

Liana I actually dont ever say 'I am starving' Liana, because I never am. To use the word 'horrific' for a bad day at the office is poor and extreme and in my opinion, bad taste in these still delicate days. If you choose to forget the world of three months ago TODAY, thats your problem. Not mine. I can be as offended as I want to be. Just as you can be whatever. Ralph

Offended by the use of the word "horrific"? You poor thing...... As for the September 11th tragedy - I didnt mention it at all. Please dont put words in my mouth sweetie - Also bad form.

plane plane tower tower Where will the 'unacceptable' words end? Let's not blackmail ourselves into verbal straightjackets. I'm not overly fond of the words 'Sun Newspaper' and 'Hillsborough' but I would never try to shout down anyone who used them, though I was once bounced out of a pub for flooring a bloke who did use them, along with the phrase 'fucking Scousers pissing on the dead'. Now that is offensive because it isn't true. The word 'horrific' is not something to get het up about. I'm sure there are many people on this site to whom the words cancer abortion miscarriage divorce hold painful significance. Are we to ban them? Let's stop kow-towing to the lowest common denominator. We are at war, supposedly to restore freedom from tyranny. One of the greatest freedoms is the freedom of speech. Let's not be bullied into relinquishing it on the very stage that was created for the free exchange of words - ABC Tales. ground zero zero intolerance.

Liana I am offended by the work Horrific at all. I know what it means. Dont forget that I was in the USA on Sept 11th 2001. My parner Jane has had a serious nervous breakdown due to what we saw and experianced on that day and on the following days, She has not returned to work since and is on medication. I have nightmeres and drink more than I ever had these days. I was not putting words into your mouth Liana. I'm sorry if you thought that. As I said I just know what the word 'horiffic' means. Don't take it personally. Ralph

hrm

whatever.

(hrm? That was an instant message i was sending, and was not intended to be a forum post.) Sorry Ralph, had no idea that you were in New York and saw what happened that day. Still, you never mentioned that before. I am also very sorry for your wife - very sorry indeed. Still, I reserve the right to use the word "horrific", as I also reserve the right to over dramatise....you know what I mean? Writers do it. Its in their nature. Ive been told a million times to pack it in, but there you go.

a stunning post eddie. spot on.

Liana You have the right to use whatever words you want, just as I or anyone has the right to objection. As I said earliar, its three months today since that darkest day. I just thought Tony could have been a bit more sensitive when telling us of a reletavly small blip in an office. Its common knowledge on this site that I was there when it happened. I posted many daily reports on what was going on. I had much excellent correspondence from writers on this site who were encouraging and concerned and supportive. You know who you are and still thank you continually I wrote a small piece on the day and its called X: Letter from America. Its in 'RALPH DARTFORDS STORIES' I looked at it today and it all came back. Liana, sorry if I have been sloppy, I am like so many others, tied to that day. Ralph

Rah Rah Rah *waves glittery pom poms* Too bloody right - Its about WRITING.

Ralph, It was a bad day at the office for ABC and that's all. I don't think Liana deserves all this trip-laying. I know you apologised in a sloppy kind of way but you should be taken to task for giving Liana a hard time in the first place. Despite your life experiences, you are not the spiritual mediator of this site and you do not have exclusive use of the English language. If you want to reserve the word 'horrific' for your personal use I suggest you petition all the survivors of the Holocaust. A sense of proportion and fair play would not go amiss here.

i think there is a sensible debate to be had here. i don't like the use of the word "starving" by someone who's just feeling hungry, but starving has a precise definition. so why don't i mind inaccurate use of "disastrous" and "tragic" so much? "horrific" is trickier because there's no scale that says what is horrific and what isn't. from a comfortable western perspective, which ours is, his experience was horrific. but there's a hundred million people who have seen and suffered worse horror...

Doesn't starving actually mean "excessively cold"? Its one of those words that gets used and abused....as many do. I'm as guilty of it as the next person. Go on Bobert, start a new thread. Will it be something to do with writing? *excited*

Liana and Eddie and Everyone It is about writing. Its what moves us. If its good hurrah, if its bad and harmful the oppisite must apply in all cases. Its what we personally feel about something, how it moves us. I was upset not by any of the words that any of you used but by a word that Tony Cook used, a man who also proudly runs a website called 'Get Ethical' and maybe should know better I took America very personally(we all did) much in the same way as Eddie takes the Hillsborough tragedy personally(we all did there as well). We are allowed to feel angry you know, we are allowed to grieve by any means possible as long as no one gets damaged in the process and that includeds the griever. What I offensive is when people on the threads get pompous, running into the arena on very high horses kicking sand in all and sundry. They eventully eventully get knocked off though. Eddie your a saint and so is your missus Sukie. wink Ralph

<> How very very perceptive Ralph. I completely agree with you.

starving means excessively cold? does anyone on this writers' site have a dictionary handy?

hang on, I will check. Sure I heard that somewhere....

Yep, here we go....third definition. Main Entry: starve Pronunciation: 'stärv Function: verb Inflected Form(s): starved; starv·ing Etymology: Middle English sterven to die, starve, from Old English steorfan to die; akin to Old High German sterban to die, Lithuanian starinti to stiffen -- more at STARE Date: 15th century intransitive senses 1 a : to perish from lack of food b : to suffer extreme hunger 2 a archaic : to die of cold b British : to suffer greatly from cold 3 : to suffer or perish from deprivation transitive senses 1 a : to kill with hunger b : to deprive of nourishment c : to cause to capitulate by or as if by depriving of nourishment 2 : to destroy by or cause to suffer from deprivation 3 archaic : to kill with cold

well i never knew that....altho i note that there isn't a definition which says "feeling hungry due to missing lunch and may have to stop at the shop for some crisps", which is how people use it and what i don't like. come to think of it, i could errrm murder a packet of crisps at the minute

hahahaha